Celebrating Yellowstone Park

This post was written by Marybeth Kavanagh, Reference Archivist

As a previous blog post has explained, Yellowstone National Park was established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first National Park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. So we’re celebrating by sharing these stunning images taken by photographer William Henry Jackson.

Plate 30, Palace Butte Park. Y-f 1873.Jackson

geyser crater — Plate 10, Upper Fire-Hole Basin from the Crater of “Old Faithful” Y-f 1873.Jackson

falls — Plate 18, Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. Y-f 1873.Jackson

Survey team — Plate 3, Meeting of the U.S. Geological Survey in the Lower Fire-Hole Basin. Y-f 1873.Jackson

Jackson took these photographs as part of the Department of the Interior’s Geological Survey of the Territories, headed by geologist F.V. Hayden. They were published in 1873; the library holds a copy of the volume: Photographs of the Yellowstone National Park and views in Montana and Wyoming territories.

AHMC of the Month: Was he mad? The sensational Guiteau trial and the assassination of President Garfield

January 12, 2016

This post was written by AHMC cataloger Miranda Schwartz. A small, bright-red trial pass from the American Historical Manuscript Collection leads us to look back at a sensational 19th-century trial—that of Charles J. Guiteau, an unstable, itinerant bill collector and lawyer who assassinated President James A. Garfield just four months after his election. For years Guiteau had bounced from job to job, city to city, exhibiting the warning signs of mental illness. After Garfield’s victory Guiteau seized...Read More

In honor of Labor Day: a photographic tribute to New Yorkers at work

August 26, 2014

While historians still debate who first proposed a labor day holiday, there is no question as to where the first Labor Day celebration took place. Like most other important events, it happened right here in New York City. On September 5, 1882, a parade organized by the city's Central Labor Union marched up Broadway, past a reviewing stand in Union Square, and continued along 5th Avenue to its termination point at Reservoir (now Bryant) Park. The Central...Read More

Remembering Pearl Harbor

December 6, 2017

December 7th is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, honoring those killed when Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. This led to the United States' entry into World War II. These images from our World War II Photograph Collection (PR76), taken by U.S. Navy photographers, capture the aftermath of the bombing. (All captions taken from the original photos.) This collection was presented to the New-York Historical Society library in November, 1945. Most of the photographs in the...Read More

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